


What Cannot Be Had

by dreamiflame



Category: Vikings (TV)
Genre: F/M, Ghosts, Haunting, Post-Season/Series 03A, ToT: Chocolate Box, ToT: Extra Treat, ToT: Monster Mash, ToT: Trick - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-31
Updated: 2016-10-31
Packaged: 2018-08-17 09:28:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8139070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dreamiflame/pseuds/dreamiflame
Summary: In Paris, Rollo's life is perfect. Until a familiar face starts haunting him.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Isis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Isis/gifts).



> Happy Halloween! I just finished watching the first half of Season 3 of Vikings, so I found the idea of Rollo being haunted very inspiring.
> 
> Thanks to my beta for helping polish this up.

It was better, in Frankia, Rollo decided. In Frankia, he was called Duke, and was now married to a beautiful woman (who, it was true, hated him until he learned her language and customs, but completely adored him after he had), and was a trusted adviser to an Emperor.

He wasn’t king, but he was closer than he had ever been under Ragnar.

It was better. Then he woke up in the middle of the night, skin prickling with the awareness of being watched. In the faint, dying glow of the embers, he saw Siggy.

Her lips were drowned blue, her hair was soaked black and her skin was lifeless white, that first time. He stared into her unblinking, accusing blue eyes, till a burning log popped and he glanced away at the fire, making sure it hadn’t spread.

When Rollo looked back, Siggy was gone, but he still felt eyes upon him, unfriendly and cold. He tried not to shiver as he curled up again with Gisla, feeling his wife press back against him.

It was just a dream, he told himself, and managed, finally, to go back to sleep.

*

The next time he felt eyes upon him, he was thrusting hard into Gisla as she neared her peak, crying out her pleasure for all of Paris to hear. Rollo glanced up, away from her ecstatic face, and straight into Siggy’s cold blue eyes.

Even when she’d been the wife of Earl Haraldson, her eyes in life had never been that cold. Under her frigid stare, Rollo felt his cock deflate, much to Gisla’s disappointment.

“My husband?” she asked, craning up so she could rub her face against his. “What is it that makes you soften so?”

Rollo tore his gaze from Siggy and reached between him and his wife to finish Gisla off, and didn’t answer. Each time his gaze slid to where Siggy was standing, she was still there, frowning at him with those chilly eyes.

At least this time she looked as she had when she was alive, and not like a drowned horror. Gisla screamed her release and he licked his fingers clean before tidying his clothes up.

Siggy shook her head at him when he looked again at her, then between one breath and the next, she was gone.

*

At first, Siggy’s appearance was enough to cause Rollo to stop whatever he was doing. More than once, he found himself unable to finish pleasuring Gisla with his cock, and having to resort to other means. He left the table in the middle of more than one meal, unable to eat with those eyes upon him. To the consternation of those under him, Rollo had even left defense meetings, trying to run from Siggy and her silent accusations.

She came so often, however, that Rollo grew accustomed to it. He would love Gisla more passionately, feeling the weight of Siggy’s stare. He ate more heartily, to show her what she could no longer have. And he ignored her in the strategy meetings: the defence of Paris had to be his first priority. Rollo would not let Ragnar sack the city again.

But Siggy still woke him, in the middle of the night when the fire burned low. She would stand, barely illuminated by the embers, and her eyes asked a thousand thousand questions that Rollo couldn’t answer.

Finally he had enough, and flung himself out of bed to face her. It had been a long day: they had beaten back the Northmen, and Rollo himself had fought Ragnar. Neither had won, though Rollo still felt every hammer blow of his brother’s fists. He hoped Ragnar felt the same, somewhere out on the sea.

Gisla stirred when Rollo tossed the blankets aside, but she didn’t wake. Rollo stumbled close to Siggy’s ghost, letting his height help loom him over her, even if he could barely stand. 

“What do you want?” he asked, in the Northern tongue. “Why do you keep coming back?”

Siggy tipped her head back and gave him a haughty stare, just as she so often had done before. “The gods do not forget. The gods do not forgive.” Neither does Ragnar, she did not say.

_Neither do I._

“The gods set me on this path,” Rollo said, but she gave him a pitying look. He clenched his hand in a fist, feeling cuts on his knuckles split back open.

“They do not forget,” she repeated, and vanished. The place she’d been in was cold, and Rollo shivered.

He’d thought Frankia was a better place for him, but what if he’d been wrong? What if Siggy had been trying to warn him?

What did he do now?

A log in the fire spat sparks, an echo of her first horrible appearance, and Rollo moved back, feeling every aching place on his body protest the abrupt movement.

The past was done, Rollo told himself, and tried to will himself to sleep.

He couldn’t banish her eyes from his mind. Siggy’s beautiful blue eyes, so cold as she watched him go about his life.

And pitied him.


End file.
